12 years ago, Google launched a truly innovative suite of products to compete with Microsoft's behemoth Office suite called "Google Docs and Sheets".

This promised to revolutionize the way we work.

Instead of having to email Word and Excel attachments to co-workers and worry about old versions, conflicting changes, etc., the document was hosted in one place, and everyone could always access and update the very latest version with no fuss or muss.

Cloud Computing was The Next Big Thing™* and everything was going to be better!

*NOTE: Cloud Computing was not really new, but more a reboot of networked timesharing from the 60s and 70s distributed on a global scale. But that's another story for another time.

Fast forward 12 years, and Word and Excel files are still everywhere!

Now, there are still a few cases where Docs and Sheets are missing features that Word and Excel have.

My feeling was strong enough that I divested all FB holdings the same day.

Glossing over the details at the time, I simply stated that Facebook had "lost its way."

After posting, several of my friends and relatives (on Facebook, of course) suggested that I should create the Next Facebook. Funny enough, I'd already been there and done that. My reply: "I started a project called "FriendPortal" in 2003 that was to be a simpler, better alternative to Friendster. Before I could finish it, some scrappy Harvard kid beat me to the punch. Somebody will make the "next" Facebook. Odds are decent that it won't be me :)"

I thought it would be interesting to go a bit more in-depth on this topic.
History Lesson
In my mind, the first modern "social networking" site was Friendster (2002). It was quickly followed by MySpace (2003) and Faceb…

Some of my friends are big fans of WhatsApp, and have noted that I don't (and won't) use it, so I just wanted to briefly provide the major reasons why: It's owned by Facebook (and connected to the Facebook platform) and there are some major privacy concernsSince acquisition by Facebook, there have been major security concerns
Due to similar problems, I advise against using similar apps like Apple iMessage, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, etc.
If you're really keen on using a "Whatsapp-style" secure messaging app (with group messaging, voice calls, etc.), there is an alternative that is free, open source, and run by a non-profit organization.
It's called Signal and can be found at: https://signal.org/
I have it installed, so feel free to send me a test message to try it out, and let me know if you have any further questions about the various privacy and security concerns with some of these other messaging apps.
Further reading: https://www.te…

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